Prankster Logic and Leadership

They pulled the bus into Babbs's garage and sat around for one final big briefing before taking off to the east.

Kesey starts talking in the old soft Oregon drawl and everybody is quiet.

"Here's what I hope will happen on this trip," he says.

"What I hope will continue to happen, because it's already starting to happen. All of us are beginning to do our thing, and we're going to keep doing it, right out front, and none of us are going to deny what other people are doing."

"Bullshit," says Jane Burton.

This brings Kesey up short for a moment, but he just rolls with it.

"That's Jane," he says, "And she's doing her thing. Bullshit. That's her thing and she's doing it."

"None of us is going to deny what other people are doing. If saying bullshit is somebody's thing, then he says bullshit. If somebody is an ass-kicker, then that's what he's going to do on this trip, kick asses. He's going to do it right out front and nobody is going to have anything to get pissed off about. He can just say, 'I'm sorry I kicked you in the ass, but I'm not sorry I'm an ass-kicker. That's what I do, I kick people in the ass.' Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip."

Then Kesey held the second briefing. They were going to take their first acid of the trip here and have their first major movie production. He and Babbs and the gorgeous sexy Paula Sundsten were going to take acid &mdash Wikieup! &mdash and the others were going to record what happened. Hagen and Walker were going to film it, Sandy was going to handle the sound, and Ron Bevirt was going to take photographs.

Sandy feels his first twinge of &mdash what? Like ... there is going to be Authorized Acid only. And like ... they are going to be separated into performers and workers, stars and backstage. Like ... there is an inner circle and an outer circle. This was illogical, because Hagen and Walker, certainly, were closer to Kesey than any other Pranksters besides Babbs, and they were "workers," too, but that was the way he feels. But he doesn't say anything. Not ... out front.

"There are going to be times," says Kesey, "when we can't wait for somebody. Now, your either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place &mdash then it won't make a damn." And nobody had to have it spelled out for them. Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus ... or off the bus."

Kesey held another briefing, and without anybody having to say anything, they all began to feel that the trip was becoming a ... mission, of some sort. Kesey said he wanted them all to do their thing and be Pranksters, but he wanted them to be deadly competent, too. Like with the red rubber balls they were always throwing around when they got out of the bus. The idea of the red rubber balls was that every Prankster should always be ready to catch the ball, even if he wasn't looking when it came at him. They should always be that alert, always that alive to the moment, always that deep in the whole group thing, and be deadly competent.

Kesey's role and the whole direction the Pranksters were taking &mdash all the Pranksters were conscious of it, but none of them put it into words, as I say. They made a point of not putting it into words. That in itself was one of the unspoken rules. If you label it this, then it can't be that ... Kesey took great pains not to make his role explicit. He wasn't the authority, somebody else was: "Babbs says..." "Page says..." He wasn't the leader, he was the "non-navigator." He was also the non-teacher. "Do you realize that you're a teacher here?" Kesey says, "Too much, too much," and walks away ...

Kesey keeps doing this kind of thing. As if by radar, Kesey materializes at the critical moment, in the cabin, out front, in the backhouse, up in the woods. The crisis may somebody's personal thing or some group thing &mdash suddenly Kesey pops up like Captain Shotover in Shaw's play Heartbreak House, delivers a line &mdash usually something cryptic, allegorical, or merely descriptive, never a pronouncement or a judgment. Half the time he quotes the wisdom of some local sage &mdash Page says, Cassady says, Babbs says &mdash Babbs says, if you don't know what the next thing is, all you have to &mdash and just as suddenly he's gone.

For example &mdash well, it always seems like there's no dissension around here, no arguments, no conflict, in spite of all these different and in some cases weird personalities ricocheting around and rapping and carrying on. Yet that is only an illusion. It is just that they don't have it out with one another. Instead, they take it to Kesey, all of them forever waiting for Kesey, circling around him.

What happened to the Pranksters after Kesey's flight to Mexico was so much like what happened to the League after Leo fled in Hermann Hesse's book The Journey to the East &mdash well, it was freaking weird, this particular synch ... exactly ... the Pranksters! and the great bus trip of 1964! their whole movie. No; it went on. Hesse's fantasy coincided with theirs all the way. It went on &mdash all the way to this weird divide &mdash

The leader of the the League in The Journey to the East was named Leo. He was never openly known as the leader: like Kesey, he was the "non-navigator" of the brotherhood. And Leo left "in the middle of the dangerous gorge of Morbio Inferiore," just when the League was deepest into its Journey to the East, in the critical phase of a trip that was being alternately denounced and wondered at.

[...]

Very weird, the synch!

Prankster Heirarchy? There wasn't supposed to be any Prankster heirarchy. Even Kesey was supposed to be the non-navigator and non-teacher. Certainly everybody else was an equal in the brotherhood, for there was no competition, there were no games. They had left all that behind in the straight world ... but ... call it a game or what you will. Right now, among the women, Mountain Girl was first, closest to Kesey, and Faye was second, or was it really vice versa, and Black Maria was maybe third, but actually so remote it didn't matter. Among the men, there was Babbs, always the favorite ... and no games ... but sometimes it seemed like the old personality ... looks, and all the old aggressive, outgoing charm, even athletic ability &mdash it won out here, like everywhere else ...

Yet by and by Black Maria was a Prankster. It was just there, in the air, the fact that she was now a Prankster. She had altered the flow, and not by accepting it, either.

Page's girl, Doris Delay, was going through the same thing. There was something she wanted to ask somebody, but how could she ask it. Finally she came up to Sandy Lehmann-Haupt and said, "What do they mean &mdash Never trust a Prankster?"