Literary ARTE MODERNA: A Novel CHASING FREEDOM Remembering the Sixties

By Paul Heidelberg


"This would make a fine film" one reader wrote.


The book is available online at Amazon, BN dot coms etc. It is also available through your local bookstore if you have one.


It is fitting I post this on the day of celebration for Martin Luther King, Jr. I saw Dr. King speak in Houston in the Fall of 1967 at a rally for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. At one point, standing less than five feet from him, Aretha Franklin sang the "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom" song. Simply amazing.


Later, persons set off very loud smoke bombs in this huge auditorium. Dr. King then broke into a 30 minute plus extemporaneous speech that included such lines as "They will try to stop us. The journey will be difficult, not easy."


Simply amazing again.






Here is a brief synopsis of my novel CHASING FREEDOM Remembering the Sixties:

How it really was in the Roaring Sixties, chronologically from about 1965 to 1975.

 

Early Sixties musicians were people like Gene Pitney and Bobby Vinton. Early Seventies performers included people like Neil Young, The Band, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters and The Who.

 

We follow two artists on their journeys of self-discovery at the then best art college in the USA, The San Francisco Art Institute.

 

San Francisco was an affordable place then, with a full-sized apartment near Russian Hill going for 150 dollars a month; at a nearby store you could get a 16-ounce Coors beer for 17 cents.

 

At the Pillory bar near the Art Institute down Chestnut Street, a 20-ounce pint of fresh Miller High Life beer cost 70 cents. An equally large pint of Guinness or Watney’s ale would set you back a cool dollar. The Pillory’s great jukebox featured such great songs as The Band’s “Don’t Do It."

 

You could call it the best of both worlds -- high-grade grass was still readily available in San Fran (you never called  it Frisco unless you were wearing Hell’s Angels colors) and that scene was melding with the Seventies drinking scene, with jugs of California red wine always on hand at art openings at the SFAI.

 

The book’s two protagonists, both studying painting at the AI, save their pennies and travel to Europe for a break from art school. Europe was quite affordable in those days, with a full-sized meal of Pommes Frittes and Moutard wrapped in newspaper available at a stand on the Boulevard St. Michel on the Left Bank for 25 cents US.

 

A bottle of wine at a corner store cost less than a dollar, and a great-tasting baguette was a few cents US.

 

In Paris the couple is startled to see a concert poster announcing a gig by the Grateful Dead -- they were amazed to make it all the way to Europe to see a performance by the San Francisco Sixties staple. Of course, they attend the concert.

 

Back in San Francisco, at a rocky point in their relationship, the two protagonists have a period of “not seeing each other."

 

The story concludes at “The Last Waltz” concert -- the farewell concert by The Band that featured such guest performers as Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Neil Young and Muddy Waters with guitarist Bob Margolin.

 

After they are reunited, the couple listens to The Band perform the great tune “Don’t Do It," their favorite song on the Pillory jukebox.

 

 

(Author’s note: perhaps the film’s producers could gain rights to show portions of Martin Scorcese’s great film “The Last Waltz” to be used as backdrop as the protagonists are superimposed on the footage.)

 

 Here is one of the works of visual art I have created  in the past year  -- a year of a "feverish flurry of visual art" that numbers in the hundreds.