Stanley Krippner and Mickey Hart Reminscing

This is some rare archival footage of a conversation between two old friends, Dr. Stanley Krippner and his longtime pal and admirer, Mickey Hart, former drummer for the Grateful Dead and author of Planet Drum. In this brief dialogue, recorded at Mickey's ranch, Stan and Mickey reminisce about their relationship, Stan's early experiments (when he was director of Maimonides Dream Lab in NY) with Mickey and the Dead involving group telepathy and hypnosis. If I recall, they met originally at a party hosted by Timothy Leary, who approached Stan and asked him if he'd ever heard of the Grateful Dead. Stan, of course, had not. "Well," Tim said, "I have a young man I want you to meet." He escorted Stan into a bedroom where Mickey waited anxiously to meet him. These two great figures of our time have been intimate friends ever since.

I was privileged to be present at this reunion, the intended purpose of which was to shoot footage for a documentary being prepared called "Making the Invisible Visible: The Life and Work of Stanley Krippner." Sadly, hundreds of hours of extraordinary archival footage has yet to be transformed into a film, now many years later. However, the filmmaker, Tamara Gurbis of Phenomenal Films, was kind enough to rough cut edit a short segment from this extaordinary conversation between Stan and Mickey that I was privileged to witness (behind the camera).

In addition, this meeting introduced our young friend, Sidian Morningstar Jones, to Mickey for the first time. Sid, a talented young poet and graphic artist, is the grandson of the late legendary medicine man of the Shoshone Nation, Rolling Thunder. "RT" as he was known to Mickey, Stan and other close friends, is arguably the most famous, and controversial, Native American medicine man of our time. As a result of this introduction, Mickey suddenly recalled that he had saved dozens of rare audiotapes of RT's lectures before he died, and gifted them to Sid, who hopes to one day create a book based on the transcripts.

One of the highlights of the conversation we recorded that day, was Mickey's hilarious tale of the time he got so stoned on peyote with RT on Shoshone Land that he and RT got completely lost in RT's own backyard. If not for being rescued by his dog, who found them and led them home, they would probably still be lost, Mickey joked. Personally, I find the concept of a legendary Native American holy man being lost in his own yard beyond hilarious.

Hopefully, one day, the fuller stories will be shared with the public. Like the day Mickey called Stan during an emergency concerning RT. While a remarkably powerful and gifted healer himself, a fact that is well documented, RT had difficulties when it came to healing himself. Stricken with mortal gangrene in his legs from an injury, he was on the verge of death when his family called on Mickey and Stan to intervene. Mickey called Stan and told him what was happening and that they needed to drop everything, get on a plane that was standing by waiting for them to board, and fly to Nevada to RT's home in Shoshone country. Which they did. The plane or private helicopter that transported them, as it turns out, belonged to the legendary rock impresario, Billy Graham. Upon arrival, Stan intervened with his stubborn friend, and RT yielded to Stan's sage and stern advice, saving his life in the nick of time.

That said, enjoy this rare video treat.


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