I had a hard time deciding on a word tonight. I picked one while I was in the shower a couple of hours ago. Damned if I can recall what I chose. Thus, I pulled this one out of my head moments ago.

Psychedelia.

I think this definition is a little too narrow. I think of, “psychedelia,” as pretty much defining the entire hippie (not hippy) movement of the 1960’s. It definitely goes beyond drugs, although, such drugs can be used today, and encompasses all the social movements that hippies believed in.

It’s more than the music. Even here, today’s music can have elements of psychedelic. Think of The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane (NOT Starship, please, God, no), Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. The quintessential psychedelia concert was, of course, the first Woodstock, held in New York State.

I think of the Grateful Dead as the quintessential hippie band. Jimi Hendrix probably personified psychedelic music better than any musician from the 1960’s. And, San Francisco was the epicenter of psychedelia. The corner of Haight and Ashbury May even be the epicenter of the epicenter.

Images taken from the internet.

In a sentence: Psychedelia was a social movement that represented freedom of expression, expansion of the mind via drug experimentation, the turning away from tradition toward uncharted mores, and universal use of divergent thinking.