35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

126
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
necklaces were trying very hard to look like part of the gathering,
too. Instead, they looked dreadfully uncomfortable. Music belted
out from a massive PA system set back near the shadowed palms
and bushes, perched on raftlike rectangles made from wooden
planks. Someone who sounded very much like Bob Dylan, but
better, was singing something about twisted fate. It was only a week
later that I learned it had been Dylan himself – a new album I’d
never heard, called Blood on the Tracks.
Everyone knows you can’t dance to Bob Dylan – you can’t even
hum him – but this didn’t prevent the tribes of Calangute from
trying. Silhouetted by flames like huge burning curtains, forms
writhed and swayed, hair hanging or flying out in blurred halos,
bells tinkling, beads and pendants and silver chains rattling. Scarves
tied to heads and hands and legs waved like snakes; breasts and
buttocks, some streaked with coloured paint, all slick with sweat,
rolled and shook and swayed.
Esther looked terrified and David looked at the scores of seminaked
women all around him – until he realised Esther was watching
him. ‘Woodstock – slight reprise,’ she hissed.
Ray had gone to talk to a couple who looked as prosperous as he
did compared to most of the other white tribals. Debbie was nowhere
to be seen.
‘Feed your head, man,’ a skinny blond boy advised me, bobbing
past, shaking matted curly locks, waving a smouldering joint the
size of the Olympic torch.
‘Pity I forgot to pack the freak flag,’ said Esther. ‘We could be
waving it high now.’
Hashish was clearly just the aperitif here, too. Whenever you see
people unusually interested in their own hands, waving them slowly
back and forth in front of their faces as if expecting soap bubbles to
stream from their fingertips, you know there are powerful
psychedelics on the job. As Jimi Hendrix played the plaintive solo
from ‘Little Wing,’ a girl wearing only vast silver bracelets came
and stood about six feet away, staring at me. Her hair and skin were
so wet – droplets reflecting the firelight streaming down her body
like golden honey – that she must have been swimming, not
sweating. Stock-still, arms hanging by her sides, she did not even