If there’s a rumble, I’m sticking with him

Sunday, January 29th, 2017

I don’t know that I’d call Stewart Brand the last prankster, but he is an interesting character:

Brand served in the Army as an officer from 1960 to 1963. I’m initially puzzled by how early and often in our conversations Brand praises his time in the military, but I come to see how much this period in his life defines him. He credits the Army with teaching him how to judge character, how to accomplish goals. “I learned how to back the fuck off and let the ‘sergeants’ do their work,” he says. Although in some respects a flower child, Brand never grew a beard or long hair, last dropped acid in 1969, calls Zen boring, and dismisses the New Left activists of his youth as all talk and no action – a failing Brand clearly cannot abide. In ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,’ Tom Wolfe’s book on the psychedelic peregrinations of Kesey and his hippie companions, Brand is identified as the “restrained, reflective wing of the Merry Pranksters.” (Krassner describes his time rooming with Brand as “a New Age Odd Couple,” with Brand as Felix.) It was Brand who organized the Merry Pranksters’ famous Trips Festival, a music-and-light show attended by 10,000 people, many of whom saw their first (of many) Grateful Dead shows there.

Maybe most famously, during an LSD-induced vision in 1966, Brand wrote in his journal, “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?” The first space launch was more than a decade old, and Brand believed the image would transform how humans conceived of the planet. He began distributing buttons displaying his question – they quickly became popular in the Haight, in Oakland, and eventually at NASA. Photographs from space were released in 1968 and soon appeared on the covers of both the first Whole Earth Catalog and ‘Life’ magazine (and later on your Mac screen), providing just the jolt to environmental consciousness that Brand had envisioned. Two years later, more than 20 million Americans attended rallies for the inaugural Earth Day.

[...]

He is not cool in any conventional sense, nor is he slick in presentation or attire, like some Timothy Ferriss type. Nor does he possess the laid-back vibe of, say, Steve Jobs, with his faded Levi’s and mock turtles. Brand has dressed that evening in a moisture-wicking, triple-stitched 5.11 tactical shirt with a half-dozen pockets, including ones hidden along the chest that are specifically marketed as just right for a small backup piece. Brand informs me that he has 10 of these shirts, presumably all in tan, gray, or pea green, the only colors I see him wearing. Two knives hang conspicuously from Brand’s belt – not just a practical Swiss Army but also his “dress knife,” an ornate specimen reserved for formal occasions. “If there’s a rumble,” a guy seated behind me remarks, “I’m sticking with him.”

Comments

  1. Faze says:

    You can tell a lot about Brand simply by listening to his voice on the “Long Now” podcasts. Everything in this article confirmed what I had intuited from his way of talking — right down to his being a bad dude with a weapon.

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