“It would be all one experience, with all the senses opened wide, words, music, lights, sounds, touch —
lightning.”

—  Tom Wolfe , book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

On Ken Kesey, in Ch. I : Black Shiny FBI Shoes
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
Context: He talks in a soft voice with a country accent, almost a pure country accent, only crackling and rasping and cheese-grated over the two-foot hookup, talking about —
"—there's been no creativity," he is saying, "and I think my value has been to help create the next step. I don't think there will be any movement off the drug scene until there is something else to move to —"
— all in a plain country accent about something — well, to be frank, I didn't know what in the hell it was all about. Sometimes he spoke cryptically, in aphorisms. I told him I had heard he didn't intend to do any more writing. Why? I said.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph," he said.
He talked about something called the Acid Test and forms of expression in which there would be no separation between himself and the audience. It would be all one experience, with all the senses opened wide, words, music, lights, sounds, touch —
lightning.

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Tom Wolfe 12
American author and journalist 1930–2018

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