Woodstock, 1969

For us guitar players, when we hear the word Woodstock, we are immediately taken back in time to the first time we heard Jimi Hendrix’s four-minute symphony titled “Woodstock Improvisation” or Santana on Soul Sacrifice. But for some time, my knowledge of the infamous three-day festival in upstate New York stopped there. My understanding of its influence on 60s counterculture, rock and roll, and future music performances amounted to a bare minimum. But after being exposed to the madness of the festival through images and videos, I decided to forget about Jimi and Carlos for a second and simply dig in.

One of the biggest aspects of the festival I noticed almost immediately was its shortcomings. From its planning all the way to its end, the festival was riddled with failures, delays, and unexpected events. For instance, the founders of Woodstock, Michael Lang, Artie Kornfield, Joel Rosenman, and John P Roberts’ choices for the venue were rejected by local law enforcement, attorneys, and residents a total of three times. Although the original plan for its venue was a site in the town of Woodstock, local residents rejected the idea. The creators found a second candidate in that of a farm in Saugerties, New York, but it was once again rejected by the local attorney. The men tried for a third time, in a 300-acre venue in Wallkill, but were rejected when residents heard that 50,000 people would be attending the festival. In the end, Lang settled on a dairy farm owned by Max Yasgur. It was a beautiful location; Yasgur’s farm was a natural bowl sloping down to a nearby pond, offering visitors spectacular views of the surrounding hills. Lang, Kornfield, and Rosenman were still under the impression that a maximum of 50,000 people would be attending.

On the day of the performance, a peak of 450,000, 9 times what the officials had expected, showed up at Yasgur’s farm. The small highway and the narrow roads of Upstate New York only delayed their arrival with a giant traffic jam. According to local law enforcement, the traffic jam stretched up to 20 miles along Route 17B, the small two-lane highway in Bethel, New York. Among these drivers were performers in the festival themselves. To control the influx of vehicles, the NYPD shut off the New York State Thruway, blocking cars unassociated with Woodstock from passing. When the jam did not seem to clear up, helicopters were employed to make sure performers arrived on time. The attendees, meanwhile, started walking, leaving their cars behind on the road. 

This initial delay resulted in even more setbacks. When the arrival of the first performers, the band Sweetwater, was delayed, Ritchie Havens and Indian guru Swami Satchidananda were moved up to the opening acts. Havens was forced to pull off a 47-minute segment to stall time. While doing this, he came up with a five-minute improvisation based on the word “freedom”, which became one of his biggest anthems. 

When Sweetwater arrived and performed as the third act, everything seemed to be going smoothly. Then, Mother Nature turned its back on Woodstock. A terrible rainstorm hurtled its way through the farm. 

Ravi Shankar, the Indian classical musician, was the first act to play through the rainstorm. The large open field encompassing the bowl turned into a giant, sloshing pit of mud. Almost all of the gear brought on to support Woodstock was damaged and suffered technical difficulties. Many attendees were forced to sleep in their sleeping bags, lathered in mud and rain, while others opted to stay up and play in the mud, intoxicated. Because of the extemporaneous changes in the setlist, many highly anticipated acts, such as famed folk-singer Joan Baez, were delayed to slots early in the morning, when nobody was awake. Although there were constant difficulties due to the rain, there were many highlight performances, including the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and, of course, Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys. 

But looking back, these failures, setbacks, and difficulties played a major role in shaping how we view Woodstock today. If it wasn’t for Sweetwater’s delay, we probably would not have ever experienced Ritchie Havens’ “Freedom” or the image of bored attendees dancing in the mud and swimming in the pond.

At the same time, Woodstock’s shortcomings do not act as the entire explanation for its infamous reputation. Drugs, such as marijuana and LSD, were a big part of the entire festival. Despite the sale of drugs being illegal, the law enforcement and security present at the festival amounted to only 346 off-duty officers from the NYPD. The scarcity of officers made it so that Woodstock became a bubble separate from the rest of the world. Attendees traded substances with each other, and two even died of overdoses. Carlos Santana recalls the time he performed at Woodstock while completely intoxicated with LSD given to him by Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia. As he recounts, “As soon as I took it, it was like poof, everything became another dimension…and then I see this face coming and saying if you don’t play now, you’re not going to play at all.”

Perhaps the most important aspect of Woodstock, however, is its resounding message of peace and love. In 1969, the United States was in the midst of the Vietnam War, and most of the attendees at Woodstock consisted of “hippies”, who stood for non-violence and peace. Woodstock, in essence, strove to be a countercultural utopia, where the audience would forget about the outside world and be united under Mother Nature, great music, and fellow music enthusiasts. Woodstock wasn’t just there for the music, but rather treated music as a catalyst, as a means of expression, bringing everything: peace, love, solace, unity, and freedom, all into a singular venue. For people who were there at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, it isn’t Hendrix that springs to their mind the first time, but it is peace, love, and the irreplicable spirit of freedom. 

Why Do We Pay Attention to Satire?

One of the highlights of my history class last year was analyzing political cartoons, documents, and other sources and figuring out what they meant. All of this seemed pretty analytical to me at first, but looking at the visual aspects of the sources, especially that of political cartoons, it became very clear to me that all of the design choices, including the layout, structure, and even the font evoked a common theme that the creator was trying to convey. Looking closely at this particular cartoon by Dr. Seuss, whom I only knew as a children’s book author, our entire class let out a resounding noise that can only be explained through this emoji: 😬. 

All jokes aside, Dr Seuss’ comparison of restrictive voting rights before the 24th Amendment to a selective turnstile that no one can pay the price to cross was clever and funny as well as heartbreaking. In its essence, what Seuss produced was a mere cartoon, with childish characters and faces, but what he achieved was a chilling reveal of the millions of Americans who were unable to vote due to harsh and unfair requirements. As I dissected the individual components, a sharp, gut-wrenching pain followed every part. And my curiosity behind this odd feeling grew. 

Satire, the likes we see in publications like The Onion and cartoons such as the one that Dr. Seuss created, by definition, is the use of humor, irony, or exaggeration to expose and criticize people’s stupidity, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. Humor, in particular, seems to be an important component of satire and its resonance. Perhaps it is the light-heartedness rather than the complex sociopolitical jargon and the frightening statistics that gives a fast and accurate picture of a situation. However accurate, conventional news shows or printed news fail to encapsulate the rather funny moments of an ordeal, or make it digestible to the everyday person. In fact, the emphasis on the frightening aspects of an incident only makes it harder to accept, especially if it applies to the reader or viewer. To some degree, broken promises, impulsive and failed political decisions, and other absurdities have a humorous aspect to them in a sort of witty and laconic way. In the end, wit makes simple, funny moments more dimensional and memorable. 

Another important aspect of satire that makes it impactful is its creativity and complexity behind the humor. Although humor is the first component that readers or viewers pay attention to, upon closer inspection, it is satire’s ability to break through the noise and engulf people with a mixture of cleverness, amazement, and tragedy that hits them next. I came across this cartoon depicting the race for the White House between then-incumbent president Martin Van Buren and Whig party nominee William Henry Harisson. Every chunk of this cartoon fits, almost like a puzzle. Martin Van Buren sits on a golden carriage, symbolizing the glory of the presidency, but is led by a blind horse, signaling his eventual defeat. His carriage flounders in a pile of Clay, representing Henry Clay, who endorsed Harisson in the election. Meanwhile, Harrison’s face is plastered on a steam-powered train, which has “Hard Cider” written over its body and a log cabin situated towards the back, alluding to the nominee’s humble beginnings. What is great about this cartoon, and any satirical political cartoon in that matter, is that each section of the piece contributes to the narrative; one piece cannot exist without the other. Viewers are thus compelled to glue the story together, fostering skepticism and a deeper understanding of the situation, but still retaining the humor and fun from their first viewing. 

But satire is not limited to just cartoons and writing. In the modern era, it is present in much of popular culture, including films, music, and art. A notable example of satire in the art and culture world is the controversial 2021 film Don’t Look Up, where two scientists discover a comet that will destroy planet Earth, and reveal the truth to a government and society who choose to be indifferent and be ignorant of the impending doom. Don’t Look Up models the dynamic between esteemed scientists and those who want to profit on the belief that climate change is a hoax. From a billionaire who wants to rip the comet into fragments to harvest rare minerals, to a news host who jokes about dropping the comet on his ex wife, every character and part of the plot acts as instruments hinting to the bigger picture. Although not as concise as a single article or a cartoon, the film uses mechanisms similar to those mediums that exude feelings of satire without deliberately exaggerating them to make them seem undeniably familiar. It is this adaptability of satire that makes it resonate amongst audiences across genres. 

Perhaps the most important quality of satire that forces audiences to pay attention to is its ability to make intangible events seem human. In conventional media, political issues often feel impersonal and inapplicable to the everyday human and can often seem abstract. Although humor, creativity, and adaptability break the first three barriers of this abstraction, it is the overt humanness of satire that delivers the final blow. Through the depiction of politics through cartoons, powerful world leaders perform outlandish acts: scrambling to get the biggest slice of Africa cake or slay a multi-headed monster with a giant sword. Overwhelmingly large concepts such as the economy and the national deficit are stripped down to everyday objects such as boats and a bursting balloon. It labels flawed political judgment as out of touch or miscalculated, but at the same time makes it seem like an everyday mistake, such as leaving the oven on. However dire a situation seems, it is the human quality of satire that makes us laugh in utter heartbreak.

Why Do Patterns Feel So Good?

People these days use the word “satisfying” a lot. Every time there’s something that’s aesthetically pleasing or evokes a sense of satisfaction and completion, people say, “Oh, that’s satisfying.” I always thought these satisfying moments in life came from watching concrete being ladled perfectly onto a brick surface, or chocolate melting slowly into an espresso shot as the hot coffee seeped into the nooks and crannies of a block of chocolate shaped like a snowflake perfectly balanced on the rim of a cup. We cannot deny that these moments, often captured on social media, are extremely difficult to create. So I started looking for other sources of this queer yet irrepressible satisfaction. I reminisced of the days when I would run my hand across the metal bars on railings, and when I saw a perfect row of freshly frozen icicles be shattered by an immaculate swing with a baseball bat. But through these memories, I was reminded of events of the exact opposite sense. I thought of a time when a backing track I was using to play stopped for a noticeable fraction of a second, and my playing was messed up, or when a decimal I calculated looked like a recurring decimal until I saw a different number on the 9th digit. I knew while pondering over this that patterns were the issue here. But I struggled to figure out why. Why do patterns feel so good?

This seemed like an unanswerable question. What’s the big deal? We see repetitions, or recurring things, and we feel happy about seeing them over and over again. Although I stayed in this camp for a while, I began to uncover the truth behind this mystery as I scoured the internet. 

There is a substantial amount of anatomy responsible for our excellent way of identifying patterns, and the reason why we feel so good when we come across them. There are three areas of the brain we need to focus on: the prefrontal cortex, the neocortex, and the hippocampus. All three of these sections of the brain aid us in catching sight of many of our surroundings. The prefrontal cortex is the main factor that differentiates us from other animals and mammals. During our evolution, this region of the brain expanded significantly, and thus our ability to take in what is in front of us and our surroundings was enhanced. The neocortex undertakes a similar role. Ever heard the phrase, “smooth brain”? This is referring to the thousands of wrinkles and dimples we have on the neocortex, the outermost layer of the brain. The millions of neurons in this area of the brain take in key identifying characteristics and use them to develop patterns. However, the hippocampus is a bit different. The hippocampus is a part of the brain where our ability of “cognitive mapping” originates. “Cognitive mapping” is a behavioral trait our ancestors developed, which allowed them to remember key food sources, predators, and their friends from foes. All in all, these three sections of the brain helped me understand the science behind this subject of patterns. Here’s my guess. 

My speculation is that all three areas of the brain work together to accomplish the goal of identifying patterns. First, the prefrontal cortex ensures that our eyes and other senses take in as much initial information as possible. The neocortex assists the prefrontal cortex in forming patterns and sequences. Finally, the hippocampus categorizes and assesses these patterns to identify in daily life. As the definition of cognitive mapping suggests, a break in a pattern or a disturbance to consistency can be compared to a predatory invasion. In other words, we sense danger when we see an error in a pattern. It is, in some ways, a matter of life and death. 

There have been many instances in history where our stunning ability to identify patterns, or our innate fear of facing outliers, has made us discover and build new ideas. In fact, many of our creations from pattern recognition have stemmed from a way of trying to rationalize the outlier, and finding a way to continue the existing pattern even with the presence of this change in the data. 

The popular restaurant chain McDonald's was founded through this exact method. Mixer salesman Ray Kroc one day got an order from a restaurant asking for ten mixers. Puzzled on why such a restaurant would need as many as ten mixers, Kroc attempted to investigate. When he arrived at the restaurant, he discovered that Dick and Mac McDonald, the owners of the restaurant, were completing orders in 15 seconds, making a grand total of 15,000 milkshakes every month. Stunned by the idea, Kroc launched McDonald's restaurants across the country, which would soon become the McDonald's franchise we know and love today. 

Fluoride toothpaste was also invented through a similar discovery. Dr. Frederick McKay was a dentist who saw patients from the Colorado Springs area. Although almost every single one of his patients had common dental diseases, some of his patients had brown mottling around their teeth. He later found out that, surprisingly, this condition prevented them from tooth decay and cavities. McKay discovered that the key substance responsible for the mottling was fluorine, an otherwise toxic chemical used for etching glass and making plastics. McKay’s research sparked dental companies to add small doses of fluorine compounds into toothpaste. Fluoride toothpaste also became the cure for tooth decay as a disease. 

Sometimes I wonder what would have been if we didn’t feel so comfortable and satisfied with patterns. Would we ever have had toothpaste? Or McDonalds? Probably not. So let’s give a toast to the human brain, the wonderful analysts who discovered outliers in their data, and evolution to express some gratitude for what we have.