Alternative Reality

The discovery of the psychoactive drug LSD brings on what seems like serious academic investigation into its possible use to expand human consciousness. Timothy Leary and Alan Ginsberg are two icons of this attempt, but Ken Kesey represents the next generation of experimenters with a different take on the subject. Instead of entering the LSD alternative reality for serious research, Kesey wants to take people beyond the alternative reality illusion into something that is somehow permanent, a new level of being.

Kesey and the Pranksters see illusions in the straight world, too. People play their games and draw each other into movies, symbolized by shiny black shoes with laces. The Pranksters rebel against the straight world by being anything but straight. The Day-Glo bus is the strongest symbol of this rebellion, along with Prankster behavior while on the bus. The voice of the rebellion is Prankster music...