[Re: “Del Close,” March 12]
“About this time–I guess it was ’58 or ’59–I was taking acid for the Air Force. They were investigating REM–rapid eye movement–and I started as an experimental subject. The point is they would take me to the dream lab in Brooklyn, hook me up to this machine, I would dream, and when REM indicated dreaming, they’d wake me up and say, ‘Are you dreaming?’ ‘Yes, I am, you motherfucker.’ ‘What were you dreaming about?’ ‘I don’t know. Bunny rabbits.’ I didn’t like it. I grew tired of it real fast.”
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There have been considerable changes in recent years, and I’m trying to adjust to them (as I suppose I’ll have to sometime advance beyond my Smith-Corona), but to me the glory days were the political, antiwar days under the direction of Paul Sills, Del, and Sheldon Patinkin. Memorable was the field hospital they set up in the beer garden for victims of cop brutality during the 1968 convention. Local politics were not omitted–J.J. Barry as Pa Daley and Michael Gellman as Governor Thompson were great.
