I've been told that for some years our father was very ill. I suppose it meant a lot of work for our mother who was trying - and she succeeded - to make a living for all of us. Well, I think I was too small to remember clearly what was the situation at that time. The only thing I remember is that our mother was under a big stress and we had to deal with it. Eventually my father recovered and life became easier. As a result, in the end of the sixties we were well settled down in the kind of comfortable life shared by the average middle-class family of the time. 

The sixties were a period of great turmoil. There was an irrepressible optimism stemming from baby boom, and a thriving world economy fueled by American production during World War II. The Marshal Plan had poured millions of US dollars into a war-shattered Europe, and a new world was being forged in the white heat of technological revolution. Mankind was reaching out into space. New countries in Africa , Asia and the Caribbean were achieving nationhood while their Northern former masters were finding a new role in the world for themselves. There was a great deal of friction between the two superpowers and the Berlin Wall was built.

After a short experience in public schools, I was sent to the priests. My parents were not church-goers but they probably thought the Church had more to offer than the State when it comes to education. This choice had of course a social meaning for them. As a result, I experienced for almost twelve years the myth which made Western civilization truly christian.

In the first classes, I found the regime of the school quite authoritarian and arrogant. But then at the end of the decade, things started to change. Waves of social transformation reached all sectors of society, and we experimented with certain reforms. We were told it was a result of the Vatican II Council, where the leaders of the Catholic Church took key decisions for the sake of God's children in a changing world. Boys and girls could finally speak to each other and share the same classrooms. We could also leave our uniforms at home, and there was more freedom of expression. Innovative ideas penetrated the programs and we started to have major access to mass media.

It was a time where we heard about the concrete criticism that was developed in the universities. For a whole generation of students and academicians, both in Europe and the States, the future seemed to hold nothing but the dubious promise of "progress".  A new social awareness was expanding simultaneously in several directions - civil rights, education, politics, labor, gender issues.

The idealism as well as the shooting of men such as Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy were influential. The war in Vietnam, the starvation in Biafra, the cultural revolution in China, the Flower Power in the States, the beginning of Apartheid in South Africa, the assassination of Che Guevara, the trial of Adolf Eichman were crucial too.

We experienced those events at home, through the media. The small screen, more sophisticated imaging and sound technology, would take an ever growing place in our life. But in the end of the sixties, the protest was also in the streets of Brussels. To prevent any disturbance, our schools were protected by police and military forces. We were too young to understand it, but we had the intuitive feeling that something important was happening.
 

After completing primary school, the biggest influences on me at college were Marc and Alexander. Both were older than me. They became  my classmates for about three years. They were among the first students to bring a wind of contestation in line with the cultural changes that were taking form "underground". They started to wear long hair, colorful and individualistic clothes, beads and other jewelry, and to express an open criticism about the academic programs. Their main interest was with rock music and pop culture. The last was spreading all over the continent with its headquarters and temples in London, Amsterdam, Paris and Ibiza.

Events like Woodstock meant so much to us. They represented a hope of change and a spiritual renewal. Of course, in the beginning of the seventies, it had already become a myth exploited and spoiled by the business. But still, the hippies were our reference -  with their music, poetry and literaature; with their ideals of sexual liberation, human brotherhood and peace; with their priests, idols and fallen angels. With Marc and Alexander, we were completely drawn to it.

When I turned thirteen, my two classmates left school and escaped several times from home. They had made their lives "on the road "and were traveling  extensively in Southern Europe, the Middle East and India. We met several times in Brussels during their short visits. I was fascinated by their stories and discovered more closely there were different countries, peoples and cultures than mine.

It was clear that my parents saw my friends as a threat. For them, those guys  were a kind of rebels who wanted to escape their responsibilities, exploring drugs and radical solutions to problems that did not exist. Moreover, they were betraying a value-system - modernity, progress, development - into which the previous generation had put so much hope. They wanted me to consider that the real victims were the parents, because they had endured the war during their childhood and they were offering their children the best they could. For their sake I had to be ashamed of myself. I also had to promise I would not walk that path.

For many teenagers of the time, nothing was worse than to feel entrapped in a world that aimed at taking everything from them. Real life was that you had to go to school, to the army and to the factory. Then one day the clock would stop and the world forget about you forever. I was personally shocked the day I was told my grandmother had died in a rest home where no one had been caring for her. What was the meaning ? I think many of us agreed with Jim Morrison when he said: "We want the world, and we want it now."

At fifteen, I had almost lost every hope. Life in a middle-class family was so boring. Parents had powerful rights over their children. By law they not only had a duty to taking us away from the evils of a random life, but also were asked to keep us home jailed with toys, junk foods and the supermarket catechism. In Belgium, to come of age meant to be over twenty-one. I was  fifteen and in great distress because of that.

Then, I decided to enroll in the army. I signed up for seven years and went to military college. My parents were stunned and my friends were outraged. But there I was, ready to experience a lot of new conflicts - the ones one chooses.

Among the reasons of my decision was that in my childhood I had been so fascinated by the social aura of military life that I had to transcend the myth it had created in me. Maybe it came from the scouts too - where I served since I was five - and from all these movies glorifying war heroes. Another reason was that I wanted to cut off from the family business, temporarily at least. I also personally liked the idea to spend time with new fellows of different social backgrounds.

We were one hundred and twenty boys – boys among the boys. We were paid to study and follow the rules. According to how one behaved, life was hard or easy. The fact that I did not see my future in the army gave me some freedom. It lasted one year, and then I was kindly asked to resign. In practice, I had been quite successful with my studies. However, I was seen as a dissident. For that reason I had been on duty most of the time, and visited home rarely. The conflict of ideals had become  too clear.

This experience deepened my view on life. Not only I had met beautiful people - not everybody wanted to become a Custer- but I had a more clear picture on some of the challenges I would have to meet. This specific one was about to learn how to deal with the dominating spirit of power and hierarchy which had shaped most of civilized cultures throughout the last ten millennia and set the whole planet on fire. For sure, something had to be done. But neither with bombs nor napalm.
 

I was back home, and I thought that nothing would be easy. There were still two long years in front of me before getting a chance to be on my own. It was a common practice that, at eighteen and with the parent's assent, a growing up child could lead a life on his own. Surprisingly enough, things went ok. On the one hand, my parents had become preoccupied by, and busy with, my sisters who had started to live similar conflicts. On the other hand, they were ready to make some compromises.

I made new friends at college. In our free time, we lived here and now, organized exciting parties and learned how to support each other. At home, I developed new addictions. I went deep in music and literature. I became familiar with modern and ancient philosophy and radical politics. I explored science and spirituality. I fell in love with history and poetry.

I discovered that many people in the industrialized and civilized world had found in arts, music, literature, ways to express their repressed feelings. Among others, I favored Herman Hesse, Gurdjeff, Ivan Illich, Herbert Marcuse, Krishnamurti, Alan  Watts, Gary Snyder. Through the writings of people like Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, Etienne Cabet, I became interested with community building. I also found Kropotkine very inspiring.

The dadaists, surrealists and situationists, the poets of the Beat Generation spoke directly to my heart. I'm not completely sure I liked them for their writings, but I appreciated their approach and ideals, the way in which they called in question the monoculture of our Western civilized way of thinking. Later on, I discovered deep ecology.

In my search for the meaning of life, it's music that helped me the most. I spent endless nights playing records on my stereo or listening to the radio. I knew by heart many tunes and songs, hundreds of bands and artists, their entire biography and discography. There was an exciting world out there with all sorts of feelings that went beyond individual boundaries, transcended time and space, the intellectual or sensual order; that called for genuine intercultural challenges.

Unfortunately at home, nobody had such a passion for music. My father had loved Jazz in his youth, but that time was over. It was my uncle who initiated me into Church Music and Gospel. I was maybe five or six. My musical career began very  enthusiastically in the local parish at the age of eight. It ended abruptly one year later once the family moved again into a new house. As a result, I dropped the idea of becoming a drummer or playing keyboards. For my comfort, I got my first record player.

Some people say that music connotes the highest forms of life. It was the medicine of my soul. It gave me a sense of peace and togetherness. It helped me to tune myself in many directions and to explore new sensory perceptions. I think music involves a large sense of identity.

In the middle of the seventies, there were great developments in Blues, Rock, Jazz, Folk and some varieties of "avant-garde". I loved  Progressive Rock and  "Canterbury Music". In the backyard of show-business, many people were experiencing  with creative feelings and new sounds. It was a lively and exciting time.