Epilogue (Memoir: Hoofbeats, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll)

Reflections on the concepts of time, emotions and home when writing a memoir

Casting back into memories, discovering feelings of nostalgia, joy, overwhelming sadness at the realisation of the passing of time is all part of writing. But stop there. What is this passing of time?  A recurrent theme in the description of psychedelic trips with the mind expanding drug, LSD, was the timeless quality of the experience. On those trips, we had loosened ourselves from the world as we knew it – time no longer existed. Another example of the loosening of those bonds between me and time is when I am with horses. Anyone who has had a meaningful interaction with a horse knows that it is a truly humbling experience – horses see through to your core. Of course, it isn’t always a rewarding experience – negative emotions, distractions, concerns can get in the way. But when I am open, when I let go of everything else then time ceases to exist when I am interacting with a horse.

I promised myself that when I wrote this memoir I would not let any academic habits creep in – I would just write. But when I started thinking about the concept of time and how it relates to both my LSD experiences when I was younger and also my ongoing experience of the expansion of time with horses, I had to do a little research. It was heart-warming to find that Carlo Rovelli in his book ‘The Order of Time’ acknowledges that ‘It only takes a few micrograms of LSD to expand our experience of time to an epic and magical scale’. He has written that statement in a book on quantum physics and time. He also credits his LSD trips with having a positive effect on his intellectual journey. Many other well-known scientists, artists, writers, and film-makers recognise that LSD contributed to their creativity. 

Carlo Rovelli prompted me to think about emotions in relation to time. There is a whole list of emotions that I felt when I was tripping: joy, sadness, fear, happiness, ecstasy, surprise – in fact most of the basic emotions and more besides. But where does nostalgia come into this? Many people write that nostalgia is a complex emotion that relates to the past. But surely that can only be true if we accept the concept of time always plays a part in nostalgia. Rovelli challenges the whole concept of time ‘If I observe the microscopic state of things then the difference between past and future vanishes’; later he suggests that ‘perhaps the emotion of time is precisely what time is for us’. It fills me with joy to read that emotions can enter into a discussion of quantum physics – of course they can.

There is a song ‘Sea of Joy’ by Blind Faith – one of the most beautiful songs of the sixties era. I don’t listen to the song often but when I do it sweeps me back fifty years to Blind Faith playing in Hyde Park – hearing the music echoing across the water, sweeping through the grass and up into the trees. Pure nostalgia! Rovelli suggests that ‘A song … is the awareness of time’. The complex emotion, nostalgia, is what I am feeling right now while listening to Sea of Joy – it is infused with memories of the past but there is also a timeless quality about the feeling.

Emotions also played a part when I was wrestling with the ideas for my thesis on conformity. I have always thought that writing a doctoral thesis was an emotional journey – ideally, one came up with a new idea or pieced together old ideas in a new way. Each time the pattern began to fall into place, there was a tightening of the chest, a feeling deep within the stomach, and then the excitement came bubbling through. As I come towards the end of this memoir I feel the same excitement. But before I finish I need to tackle one final piece of the puzzle – the concept of home.

I didn’t expect to be writing about home – but as with any writing you never know quite where it is going to take you. The first time I noticed that I was questioning ‘home’ was when I was still a teenager and had ceased to call my mum’s house home. I didn’t have an alternative place to call home but I was very conscious of the notions of shelter, security and warmth as was evidenced when I was on the LSD trip by the Irish Sea. Shelter and warmth are ideas that are often linked to the concept of home. But does home need to be a place? In Hyde Park in 1969 Blind Faith’s ‘I can’t find my way home’ released me from any ties – I didn’t need a home. This was the pure hedonism and short-sightedness of the 1960s; we hadn’t lived through war or bombing – we were the privileged generation. During those LSD trips in the early 1970s we wandered the night streets of New Brighton and Brighton and only headed indoors or home when the need to listen to music became too strong. Home was fragile and fluid in those days.

But does home become any less fluid as we age? It was during our trek on horseback across England that the concept of home really came to the fore. Where is home? Here is my list: A copse of trees above the Chattri near Brighton, Keymer Post on the South Downs, New Brighton beach near Fort Perch Rock, a field near Cropredy village, an old bivouac tent, and a cottage by the woods. Interestingly, my partner on the horseback trek up north also believed that the small canvas tent that we slept in for twenty three days was home.

The notion of home had already been raised by journalists in 1975 when reporting our trek. As we left Brighton the newspaper reported ‘Moving home on horseback’. Throughout the trek I had serious doubts whether I was heading for home – in fact, the further north we travelled the less it seemed like going home. But the front page of the local newspaper announced ‘Hoofing it home…’. Home is a taken for granted concept but can be so ethereal. Maybe some people do have strong concepts of where is home for them. And doubtless being uprooted from your home rather than leaving voluntarily changes ones perspective on the concept.

It is not the same for horses; they have no home, they are nomadic. Shannon, my exquisite grey horse, loved to ride out for hours especially across unexplored landscape; he never seemed to want to turn round and go home. For horses the concept of home is undeniably different. But perhaps there is also something of our evolutionary past still with us humans as well. At one point we were nomadic – we had no home –until we took up agriculture and all that entailed. The idea of trekking across country on horseback still holds a magnetic draw. Traversing the terrain is important but the learning that comes from travelling with an equine companion cannot be surpassed.