(from Penny Arcade:)
Michael Rapunzel
1950 - 2003
"The answer is never the answer. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom." Ken Kesey
Michael Rapunzel, the founder of the largest commune in the Northeast (which was located at various sites throughout Western Massachusetts) died last week at the age of 52. I knew the guy in his heyday and considered him an egomaniac, a shameless hypocrite and as mad as a hatter. Still I found myself unexpectedly saddened by the news of his passing. Ironically he died not here in the Valley, where he had such an impact on thousands of lives over two decades, but in almost complete obscurity in upstate New York. The cause of death was listed as cancer, a surprisingly quiet and commonplace death for one who lived his life way out on the furthest edges of experience. I would have predicted his end as a drug overdose or suicide.
The first time I met Michael Metelica (his real name) was in a huge barnlike structure in Warwick Massachusetts, where about 75 people were living in sleeping bags that were spread
all over the structure every night and then rolled up and put away every morning. On the occasion of our meeting Michael was dressed in a Civil War military style coat, which had special significance because he considered himself to be the reincarnation of, among others, the Confederate Civil War General Robert E. Lee.
Rapunzel was well known in Springfield through his rock band Spirit in Flesh, whose posters were plastered everywhere around town in the 1970's. The band played frequently at the old
Capitol Theatre and The Paramount (now the Hippodrome). They even had a popular album now long out of print, but which I notice you can still buy at high prices from online rariety outlets. Rapunzel was the lead singer for the group, and their rock concerts were in part
recruitment rallies for the commune of which he was the spiritual head. Many people from throughout the Valley took the band up on their open invitation to visit the commune, and I was one of them.
I was quickly disillusioned by what I experienced there. For a commune headed by a rock and roll band the place was oddly puritanical, there was no drinking, drugs or sexual promiscuity
allowed, which was very disappointing. I mean why go and live in the woods with a bunch of hippies if you can't party? Also they had a farm out there that you had to work on everyday if you expected to stay. I worked on the farm and after several days of toiling under the blazing sun in a cucumber field, stooped over plucking weeds like some old-world peasant, I resolved I ain't gonna work on Michael's farm no more!
But what really ended my experiment with communal living was the food. Not only were the members puritans but they were vegetarians as well, so after breaking your back in the fields for
ten hours all you had to come home to was a bunch of rabbit food in a big wooden bowl. For dessert they had peanut butter on homemade bread. What shocked me was that this meager meal was considered by the commune members to be the high point of the day! I couldn't figure out what was wrong with these people that they were voluntarily choosing this lifestyle which if imposed on the convicts in a chain gang at a state prison would've resulted in a riot. At least in jail you get a hamburger now and then!
After about a week of visiting this hippie hellhole I was only too ready to head gratefully back to Springfield, and it was then that I first encountered Michael Rapunzel. I had not met him earlier in my stay because Rapunzel did not live with the rest of us in the big barn full of sleeping bags. He and his girlfriend, as well as other band members, lived in an old farmhouse on the property
which was off limits to the regular commune members. I also knew by then that Rapunzel claimed to be the reincarnation of other historical figures besides Robert E. Lee, including Saint Peter, the apostle of Jesus and the founder of the Catholic Church.
My last afternoon at the commune Rapunzel suddenly appeared among us dressed in his Robert E. Lee personna. He immediately zeroed in on me as if I were the only person in the room (there were dozens of us present) and greeted me as if I were an old friend. I was surprised to realize just how old a friend he considered me to be! Rapunzel told me that when he was living his past life as Saint Peter, he had known me in my past life as a shepard who tended a flock just outside of Jerusalem. Apparently I was a shepard with a philosphical bent, since Michael/St. Peter claimed to have spent many evenings discussing spiritual and intellectual matters with me under the stars as I tended my sheep.
I'd like to say I laughed in his face upon hearing this ridiculous story, but I didn't. I didn't in part because Rapunzel had an odd charisma about him that was hard to define but quite powerful. Somehow he had a way of making you want to believe him, no matter how nonsensical his comments were. I was somewhat immune to his charms because I didn't fall for his lies, but I didn't laugh at him either. I just said "Wow, that's cool," or something to that effect. Besides, why be rude to a friend you haven't seen in nearly two thousand years?
That night, as I was asleep in my bedroll ready to split from the commune the first thing in the morning, someone shook me awake. "Gather your things and come with me," the man said.
"Rapunzel wants to see you." A few minutes later I was crossing the grassy field between the communal home and the farmhouse, the way shown by a swaying kerosene lantern held by my mysterious guide.
Soon we arrived at the mystic's dwelling. Once we were inside the farmhouse the guide
vanished. The initial sensation I experienced was the strong smell of marijuana smoke. Sitting there in the living room, shirtless, barefoot and wearing only an old pair of jeans, sat my biblical
companion Michael Rapunzel, also known as Saint Peter, the Viceroy of Christ, also known as General Robert E. Lee, the military genius of the old Confederacy, the lead singer and songwriter for the rock band Spirit in Flesh, also known as the great guru of the commune known as The Brotherhood of the Spirit, the Pied Piper of Western Massachusetts and the Grand Wizard of Warwick - smoking a big fat joint with a half-empty bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken sitting in
front of him. I stood before him with my mouth hanging open in total awe, not of Rapunzel, but of the Kentucky Fried chicken. After a week of hard labor and vegetarian dining I was ready to kill for a chicken wing!
Rapunzel offered me some chicken and also the joint. As the evening went on we drank wine and then split a qualude as well. That might be why I can't recall much of what Rapunzel told me that night. I know he said a great deal, in fact he showed little interest in me except as a captive audience for his long rambling monologues. I guess he didn't care what I thought, because he knew I would soon be leaving. He was interesting and persuasive, although it no doubt helped that I was too stoned to think twice about anything he was saying. While I don't remember the details, I know that the gist of what he said was that he had been reborn to save the world, and that this fast growing commune was merely the modest beginnings of a global movement. I did not argue with him. I was so zonked out it was all I could do to keep from drooling.
I left the next morning just as I had planned, although much later than I intended, having slept late in my drugged state. Michael was in bed and did not get up to say good-by. I remember I stole a joint off the coffee table when I left, and departed with plenty to think about. What I mostly thought was what a two-faced bastard Rapunzel was. Here were his faithful followers
living on lettuce, working like slaves and rejecting all pleasures; and here was Rapunzel, their spiritual leader, living in the seclusion of the farmhouse and leading a life of complete hedonism!
What was most weird about the people in that commune was the way they were so blind to what a con-man Rapunzel was. These were folks who had come to the commune to drop out of society and who regarded the modern world with such skepticism and distrust that they wanted to live like people in a pre-industrial age. Yet when fed a story by a guy claiming to be the reincarnation of St. Peter and Robert E. Lee, they would accept that shuck and jive without a hint of disbelief. There was a lesson in there somewhere about the need for some people to believe in something even when the evidence is against it, simply because that's the easier thing to do. The commune
members imagined themselves in the vanguard of a new lifestyle, a movement that would sweep the world. But what they were really doing was indulging themselves in evasive behavior, letting Rapunzel think for them so they could have the luxury of not thinking for themselves. I left pitying them.
I also learned a little something from the way I'd reacted to the sight of that Kentucky Fried chicken. I realized that the limited and deprived way the people on that commune lived was part of what gave Rapunzel his power. Make people eat lettuce all the time and they'll go crazy with gratitude when you finally offer them a chicken wing. I've noticed since then that on some level that same kind of withold and grant game is at the root of every destructive power relationship I've ever seen.
I never revisited the Brotherhood of the Spirit again, but followed their exploits as best I could through the local media. They eventually left Warwick and settled in several other Western Mass communities, usually to the alarm of the good citizens already living there. At one point Rapunzel had everyone in the commune apply for welfare, then made them all turn over their checks to him. The scam caused such an uproar that the legislature revised the welfare laws to prevent it from continuing. Eventually Rapunzel was rejected by his own followers for his drug and alcohol abuse. For a while he was allowed to stay in the commune, but without his dictatorial powers. Finally he was thrown out for good, and by that time the name of the group had been changed to The Renaissance Community. It still exists today, but as a pale shadow of its former
self. As for Rapunzel, he finally cleaned up his act as far as dope and booze went, but it was too late. In a photograph of him that appeared in the Sunday Republican a few years back he was almost unrecognizable, a bloated ruin of the charismatic leader I had known.
So now he's dead. What was the meaning of his crazy life? I guess we never quite got around to figuring out the meaning of life on those long nights he claimed we spent, he and I, on the fields outside the walls of Jerusalem. Or maybe he told me what the meaning of life was that night we spent on drugs in the farmhouse in Warwick, and in my stoned stupor I forgot. I don't know. I don't have any answers.
Good-by Michael Rapunzel, whoever you were.
* * * * *
ah yes, a few years ago I googled SPIRIT IN FLESH and got this. And then got on the brotherhood's email list and quickly became a Thorn in their side... The carnal devil! When I got there, Michael was just turning. Funny, when people talk about cults, they talk like the leader forced the followers into insanity. This is to avoid personal responsibility. But in reality when a cult heads into insanity, the followers corner the leader by their expectations and their desire to escape their own personal responsibility for life. This createS a feedback cycle of co-dependency
[which is totally different from inter- dependency] which spirals downwards. This doesn't happen in most groups that could be defined as cults. But Michael was in way over his head.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
1950 - 2003
"The answer is never the answer. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom." Ken Kesey
Michael Rapunzel, the founder of the largest commune in the Northeast (which was located at various sites throughout Western Massachusetts) died last week at the age of 52. I knew the guy in his heyday and considered him an egomaniac, a shameless hypocrite and as mad as a hatter. Still I found myself unexpectedly saddened by the news of his passing. Ironically he died not here in the Valley, where he had such an impact on thousands of lives over two decades, but in almost complete obscurity in upstate New York. The cause of death was listed as cancer, a surprisingly quiet and commonplace death for one who lived his life way out on the furthest edges of experience. I would have predicted his end as a drug overdose or suicide.
The first time I met Michael Metelica (his real name) was in a huge barnlike structure in Warwick Massachusetts, where about 75 people were living in sleeping bags that were spread
all over the structure every night and then rolled up and put away every morning. On the occasion of our meeting Michael was dressed in a Civil War military style coat, which had special significance because he considered himself to be the reincarnation of, among others, the Confederate Civil War General Robert E. Lee.
Rapunzel was well known in Springfield through his rock band Spirit in Flesh, whose posters were plastered everywhere around town in the 1970's. The band played frequently at the old
Capitol Theatre and The Paramount (now the Hippodrome). They even had a popular album now long out of print, but which I notice you can still buy at high prices from online rariety outlets. Rapunzel was the lead singer for the group, and their rock concerts were in part
recruitment rallies for the commune of which he was the spiritual head. Many people from throughout the Valley took the band up on their open invitation to visit the commune, and I was one of them.
I was quickly disillusioned by what I experienced there. For a commune headed by a rock and roll band the place was oddly puritanical, there was no drinking, drugs or sexual promiscuity
allowed, which was very disappointing. I mean why go and live in the woods with a bunch of hippies if you can't party? Also they had a farm out there that you had to work on everyday if you expected to stay. I worked on the farm and after several days of toiling under the blazing sun in a cucumber field, stooped over plucking weeds like some old-world peasant, I resolved I ain't gonna work on Michael's farm no more!
But what really ended my experiment with communal living was the food. Not only were the members puritans but they were vegetarians as well, so after breaking your back in the fields for
ten hours all you had to come home to was a bunch of rabbit food in a big wooden bowl. For dessert they had peanut butter on homemade bread. What shocked me was that this meager meal was considered by the commune members to be the high point of the day! I couldn't figure out what was wrong with these people that they were voluntarily choosing this lifestyle which if imposed on the convicts in a chain gang at a state prison would've resulted in a riot. At least in jail you get a hamburger now and then!
After about a week of visiting this hippie hellhole I was only too ready to head gratefully back to Springfield, and it was then that I first encountered Michael Rapunzel. I had not met him earlier in my stay because Rapunzel did not live with the rest of us in the big barn full of sleeping bags. He and his girlfriend, as well as other band members, lived in an old farmhouse on the property
which was off limits to the regular commune members. I also knew by then that Rapunzel claimed to be the reincarnation of other historical figures besides Robert E. Lee, including Saint Peter, the apostle of Jesus and the founder of the Catholic Church.
My last afternoon at the commune Rapunzel suddenly appeared among us dressed in his Robert E. Lee personna. He immediately zeroed in on me as if I were the only person in the room (there were dozens of us present) and greeted me as if I were an old friend. I was surprised to realize just how old a friend he considered me to be! Rapunzel told me that when he was living his past life as Saint Peter, he had known me in my past life as a shepard who tended a flock just outside of Jerusalem. Apparently I was a shepard with a philosphical bent, since Michael/St. Peter claimed to have spent many evenings discussing spiritual and intellectual matters with me under the stars as I tended my sheep.
I'd like to say I laughed in his face upon hearing this ridiculous story, but I didn't. I didn't in part because Rapunzel had an odd charisma about him that was hard to define but quite powerful. Somehow he had a way of making you want to believe him, no matter how nonsensical his comments were. I was somewhat immune to his charms because I didn't fall for his lies, but I didn't laugh at him either. I just said "Wow, that's cool," or something to that effect. Besides, why be rude to a friend you haven't seen in nearly two thousand years?
That night, as I was asleep in my bedroll ready to split from the commune the first thing in the morning, someone shook me awake. "Gather your things and come with me," the man said.
"Rapunzel wants to see you." A few minutes later I was crossing the grassy field between the communal home and the farmhouse, the way shown by a swaying kerosene lantern held by my mysterious guide.
Soon we arrived at the mystic's dwelling. Once we were inside the farmhouse the guide
vanished. The initial sensation I experienced was the strong smell of marijuana smoke. Sitting there in the living room, shirtless, barefoot and wearing only an old pair of jeans, sat my biblical
companion Michael Rapunzel, also known as Saint Peter, the Viceroy of Christ, also known as General Robert E. Lee, the military genius of the old Confederacy, the lead singer and songwriter for the rock band Spirit in Flesh, also known as the great guru of the commune known as The Brotherhood of the Spirit, the Pied Piper of Western Massachusetts and the Grand Wizard of Warwick - smoking a big fat joint with a half-empty bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken sitting in
front of him. I stood before him with my mouth hanging open in total awe, not of Rapunzel, but of the Kentucky Fried chicken. After a week of hard labor and vegetarian dining I was ready to kill for a chicken wing!
Rapunzel offered me some chicken and also the joint. As the evening went on we drank wine and then split a qualude as well. That might be why I can't recall much of what Rapunzel told me that night. I know he said a great deal, in fact he showed little interest in me except as a captive audience for his long rambling monologues. I guess he didn't care what I thought, because he knew I would soon be leaving. He was interesting and persuasive, although it no doubt helped that I was too stoned to think twice about anything he was saying. While I don't remember the details, I know that the gist of what he said was that he had been reborn to save the world, and that this fast growing commune was merely the modest beginnings of a global movement. I did not argue with him. I was so zonked out it was all I could do to keep from drooling.
I left the next morning just as I had planned, although much later than I intended, having slept late in my drugged state. Michael was in bed and did not get up to say good-by. I remember I stole a joint off the coffee table when I left, and departed with plenty to think about. What I mostly thought was what a two-faced bastard Rapunzel was. Here were his faithful followers
living on lettuce, working like slaves and rejecting all pleasures; and here was Rapunzel, their spiritual leader, living in the seclusion of the farmhouse and leading a life of complete hedonism!
What was most weird about the people in that commune was the way they were so blind to what a con-man Rapunzel was. These were folks who had come to the commune to drop out of society and who regarded the modern world with such skepticism and distrust that they wanted to live like people in a pre-industrial age. Yet when fed a story by a guy claiming to be the reincarnation of St. Peter and Robert E. Lee, they would accept that shuck and jive without a hint of disbelief. There was a lesson in there somewhere about the need for some people to believe in something even when the evidence is against it, simply because that's the easier thing to do. The commune
members imagined themselves in the vanguard of a new lifestyle, a movement that would sweep the world. But what they were really doing was indulging themselves in evasive behavior, letting Rapunzel think for them so they could have the luxury of not thinking for themselves. I left pitying them.
I also learned a little something from the way I'd reacted to the sight of that Kentucky Fried chicken. I realized that the limited and deprived way the people on that commune lived was part of what gave Rapunzel his power. Make people eat lettuce all the time and they'll go crazy with gratitude when you finally offer them a chicken wing. I've noticed since then that on some level that same kind of withold and grant game is at the root of every destructive power relationship I've ever seen.
I never revisited the Brotherhood of the Spirit again, but followed their exploits as best I could through the local media. They eventually left Warwick and settled in several other Western Mass communities, usually to the alarm of the good citizens already living there. At one point Rapunzel had everyone in the commune apply for welfare, then made them all turn over their checks to him. The scam caused such an uproar that the legislature revised the welfare laws to prevent it from continuing. Eventually Rapunzel was rejected by his own followers for his drug and alcohol abuse. For a while he was allowed to stay in the commune, but without his dictatorial powers. Finally he was thrown out for good, and by that time the name of the group had been changed to The Renaissance Community. It still exists today, but as a pale shadow of its former
self. As for Rapunzel, he finally cleaned up his act as far as dope and booze went, but it was too late. In a photograph of him that appeared in the Sunday Republican a few years back he was almost unrecognizable, a bloated ruin of the charismatic leader I had known.
So now he's dead. What was the meaning of his crazy life? I guess we never quite got around to figuring out the meaning of life on those long nights he claimed we spent, he and I, on the fields outside the walls of Jerusalem. Or maybe he told me what the meaning of life was that night we spent on drugs in the farmhouse in Warwick, and in my stoned stupor I forgot. I don't know. I don't have any answers.
Good-by Michael Rapunzel, whoever you were.
* * * * *
ah yes, a few years ago I googled SPIRIT IN FLESH and got this. And then got on the brotherhood's email list and quickly became a Thorn in their side... The carnal devil! When I got there, Michael was just turning. Funny, when people talk about cults, they talk like the leader forced the followers into insanity. This is to avoid personal responsibility. But in reality when a cult heads into insanity, the followers corner the leader by their expectations and their desire to escape their own personal responsibility for life. This createS a feedback cycle of co-dependency
[which is totally different from inter- dependency] which spirals downwards. This doesn't happen in most groups that could be defined as cults. But Michael was in way over his head.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
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