Summer Hill

From The Joe Frank Wiki

"A monkey's walking along, like, in the jungle, having a beautiful day."

Series
The Other Side
Original Broadcast Date
6/3/2001
Cast
Larry Block, David Rapkin, Gregory Poe, Jack Kornfield, Joe Frank
Format
Karma Style, 55 minutes
Preceded by: Emptiness
Followed by: Don't Know Mind
Purchase

Summer Hill is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series The Other Side. It was originally broadcast on June 3, 2001.

Synopsis

Larry tells a joke about a monkey saving an elephant who had fallen into a pit; later, the elephant returns the favor.

3:30: Jack Kornfield talks about incorporating sexuality with spiritual practice.

5:20: Larry tells Joe about Reichian therapy.[1] Joe tells Larry that David Rapkin can provide an expert opinion on anything.

8:00: David Rapkin tells Joe about Reichian therapy.[2]

15:50: Larry tells Joe about Reich and A. S. Neill, particularly that Neill encouraged children to act on their sexual impulses. He tells Joe about Neill's school, Summerhill.

18:50: Gregory Poe tells Joe about the school he attended, similar to Summerhill. He says it didn't prepare students for life, that many, including him, had breakdowns later. He tells Joe the principal and founder of the school had Poe draw his penis. The fellow turned it into an art piece, a tiny model of his penis in gold in a walnut shell, the 'what nut', which he sold to sex shops.

24:40: Poe and the principal had sex. They went to his time-share cabin at Lake Arrowhead.

26:00: Poe tells Joe he had a breakdown about 8 months after he graduated, '1975 April 25 about 1 PM Saturday'[3]

27:00: Jack Kornfield reminds us that we're animals, expatiates, particularly on the denial of death.

30:40: Larry tells Joe about Reich's experience in the United States.

32:20: Larry tells Joe about Reich's meeting with Einstein.[4]

34:30: Rapkin gives Joe an even more fantastical account of Reich's meeting with Einstein. He tells Joe he keeps a lead sheath around his penis.

37:30: Kornfield talks about what we were told about sex when we were growing up, how we use and mis-use sex.

42:20: Kornfield reads Pablo Neruda's poem, 'Girls':


You who were seeking the great love, the great and terrible love.
What happened, girls? Because now here it is:
See how it passes, dragging the heavenly stones,
destroying the flowers and leaves with a noise of foam
lashed against all the stones of your world,
the smell of jasmine next to the bleeding moon.
Now you touch the water with your little feet and with your little heart.
You do not know what to do.
Better are certain night journeys, certain compartments,
certain most amusing walks, certain dances with no great consequences,
than to continue this journey.
Die of fear or of cold or of doubt
for I with my huge steps will find her within you
or far from you and she will find me
she who will not tremble in the face of love
who will be fused with me in life and death

43:50: Larry tells Joe Reich went to prison, died of a heart attack.

47:10: Kornfield recounts his first sexual encounter after 5 years in the monastery. (He says he was 26.) He shook (He comments that Reich would have liked it), got cold; he thought he was dying. They spent 3 days making love.

50:20: Rapkin recounts a story from the summer of 1956, when he was 8. His entire family was incinerated when their house burnt down. Wealthy Uncle Darien left him money; he went to Summerhill. He didn't learn to read or any other basic academic skills. He later found out his family hadn't died in the fire, but he never saw them again.

54:20: Rapkin tells Joe a joke about the woman who went into a bar and asked for a double entendre.

Legacy Synopsis
  • Larry - a joke in which a monkey with a Mercedes finds an elephant in a hole.
  • Kornfield - Sexuality and practice, getting beyond ourselves.
  • Larry - Reichian theory. David Rapkin's relationship to truth.
  • David Rapkin - Reich, Leyden jars.
  • Larry - A. S. Neill. Sexuality and children. Summerhill School.
  • Gregory Poe - An enlightened school that doesn't prepare one for life. Being asked by the principle to draw his penis, which is turned into a novelty pendant embedded in a walnut shell called the "what nut?"
  • Kornfield - we are animals.
  • Larry and Joe - Reich's community as a den of swingers hiding behind philosophical justification. Reich encounters Einstein.
  • David Rapkin - An absurd account of the meeting between Reich and Einstein; Einstein's erection. Wearing a lead penis sheath.
  • Kornfield - sexual messages when growing up. Animal sex. Pablo Neruda poem. Sex after celibacy.
  • David(?) - he was a child at summer hill after his parents died in a fire.
  • David (?) - a double entendre joke.

Music

Footnotes

  1. Wilhelm Reich
  2. some of which is accurate, much is not
  3. 1975 April 25 was a Friday.
  4. Larry says that Reich claimed to have created organic matter from inorganic matter. Friedrich Wöhler did this in 1828. Einstein and Reich met, but not about this.