CJ Stone excerpt from Fierce Dancing

http://cjstone.hubpages.com/hub/Fierce-Dancing-Adventures-in-the-Underground

In the afternoon I met Chris Wally. He'd been one of the Wally Tribe. He was very drunk. Chris Wally doesn't live in a Tepee (he doesn't even call himself Chris Wally anymore): he lives in the only house in the entire valley, a grim, grey cottage, devoid of light. He talked a little about Wally Hope. He thought it was no wonder that Phil had been certified back then. He must have sounded mad with all his strange declarations: "I am the Son of the Sun. Acid is the Sacrament." All that stuff. And he pooh-poohed the idea of any kind of conspiracy. The powers-that-be, they're just greedy. You don't need any of that conspiracy theory stuff to explain their motivations. Their motivation is profit, that's all. They don't need to get together in secret meetings. They share the same motivation. It's a kind of understanding. Events like Wally Hope's death are the accidental side-effect of this. Not intentional: a conspiracy of accidents. His death was brought on as much by his own intransigence - and by their failure to understand what he was trying to say - as by any dark conspiracy.

He was talking very loudly. It was a declamation not a conversation. He wouldn't answer any questions. He was impenetrable in his drunken armour. I had the feeling of a cover-up. Not a conspiracy, you understand: a kind of understanding with himself. He was one of the people who had been in the house when Wally Hope was busted. He was one of those who'd got on with the '75 festival oblivious to Phil Russell's fate. Of course he'd never meant him to die. He wasn't guilty in any way. He'd have been very young at the time. All that was gone now. If he'd ever believed in Wally Hope's miracles, it had no meaning for him now. He was sticking doggedly to the facts. Too old for youthful fantasies. Too old for any wild talk of conspiracies and the rest. He was just trying to get on with his life. What else was there to do?

I recognised a bitterness in his tone. It wasn't that I disagreed with his analysis (personally I'm both drawn to and suspicious of conspiracy theory): it's just that he seemed too forceful in his argument, too quick in his rejection of what has come to be a mythology of the movement. How did Wally Hope die? Well, he died. And he left all of his friends behind.