Transcription of descriptive essay, "Trans-Love Special" (Undated, c. 1967). This transcription preserves the spelling, punctuation, and word choice of the original document.
Trans-Love Energies Unlimited of Detroit is a hippie
cooperative designed to formalize some aspects of our daily life-style
and to make use of some of the possibilities available to us as a group
(tribal unit) but not as individuals only. Most of you know as much
about Trans-Love as anyone else, since you know of or have heard of our
actions, which express (and are the sole expression of) our "philosophy."
A brief summary might be helpful: Trans-Love is located in the heart
of the Warren Forest, an inner-city neighborhood populated by hippies,
students, and lower-class white and black people who are mostly immigrants
from the southern states of America. Our first concern is with our
immediate community, and we work to make our own artists and craftsmen
better known to people outside the Forest. Trans-Love books jobs
for the MC-5, Billy
C. and the Sunshine, and other bands, both jazz and rock, who are indigenous
to the Forest. We book jobs for the Magic Veil Light co., a group
of light-color artists who specialize in "psychedelic wall projections."
We produce and distribute poetry books and magazines at the Artists' Workshop
Press, and posters and other design work from Warlock Studios (Gary Grimshaw,
John Ka, Linda Carlson, David Carlin, and other graphic artists); We make
available photographers, film-makers, sign painters, designers, editors,
and consultants from among our people. We have craftsmen and artisans
too: Pun the sandalmaker, Dennis Smith's skin shop (leather goods
custom-made), beads and jewelry and other groovies produced by Trans-Love
people. Detroit LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) is a member of the Trans-Love
Energies, and we distribute marijuana fact sheets and reprints of articles
on marijuana and LSD for LEMAR, as well
as manning a marijuana defense committee and an inner-space travel agency
for those who wish to use LSD and other mind-expanding chemical agents
and want information and/or guidance on their proposed journeys.
We operate the Trans-Love General Store, at 4857 John Lodge, and, whenever
possible, we publish a tabloid newspaper, THE
SUN, with offices next door at 4863 John Lodge. The Fifth Estate
newspaper, a member of Trans-Love, is located around the corner at 1107
West Warren. And the board of directors of Trans-Love, which presently
includes Emil Bacilla, Pun Plamondon, Gary Grimshaw, Judy Janis, Linda
Carlson, Danny Bellinger, John, Magdalene, and Sunny Sinclair, and Tom
and Grace Mitchell, lives cooperatively in a large apartment complex above
the Sun office and the Fifth Estate.
Generally, Trans-Love works to promote self-reliance
and tribal responsibility among the artists, craftsmen, and other lovers
in the Forest. We are incorporated as a non-profit organization and
exist through our own efforts and the donations of sympathetic people who
are not physically part of the community. In this way we maintain
control over our own working and performing circumstances without having
to answer to any special interest group whose power exists only because
they have the money and other people don't. Money in fact has nothing
to do with the commitment of the people who make up Trans-Love Energies
Unlimited. These are people who love their work and donate it to
the immediate community and the city and surrounding area at large because
they feel that the people need what they have to offer. Naturally,
it costs money to do anything in America, indeed in any country where both
materials and labor have been usurped by individual power-heads and are
not made available to those who need them when they need them because
they need them. We are working to show that money and material gain
need not be a determining factor in any art-work, even though it is necessary
in order to maintain facilities, pay rent, utilities, phone bills, buy
materials, equipment, machinery, and other necessary tools - and in order
that people who are working can eat properly. Because our work expands
with every penny we get, we never have enough money on hand to pay our
bills, feed the people who have no income because they give their work
to the community without concern for money rewards, etc. WE ALWAYS
NEED MONEY, and anyone who can spare it is urged to get in touch with me
through Trans-Love, 831-6840 in Detroit.