BE-IN

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Your article of April 19 on the projected Cambridge Human Be-In may have inadverdently created some mistaken impressions, which we want very much to correct. The article referred to us as "organizers" of a Be-In, which we were supposedly "planning" and hoped to "stage" on a Sunday afternoon very soon. This was a mistake, for a Be-In cannot be organized or planned or stage: it can just be. If we organized the organic flow of Cambridge life into a fixed structure, if we planned a program of events, if we set up a stage to focus all attention, if we exhorted everyone to come to a definite place at a definite time for everyone to come to a definite reason, the result might be lovely -- but it would not be a Be-In.

A human Be-In would occur, however, if on some fine spring day (say, Sunday, April 30) lots of people just happened to be in some idyllic place on the earth, near the water, in the air, under the sun (say, along the banks of the Charles), dressed colorfully and extravagantly, singing, dancing, playing instruments of all kinds in all genres, declaiming poetry, flying kites, breaking and sharing bread, radiating love (eros, philia, agape), expressing and enjoying themselves in every way -- in short, rejoicing in their humanity and in their being. Thus a Be-In can only arise spontaneously out of the spirit of the Cambridge community. It is beyond our powers to call it into being. All we can do is watch and wait, and hope that we are in town when it is. Marshall Berman 4G   Barry Dym 3G   James Gordon 4M   Lester Hoffman 5G   Jesse Kornbluth '67