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Introduction

A New Interpretation of SMiLE

Zen and Pet Sounds

The Elements

The Koan/The Hallucination

Bio Based SMiLE

The Opposites

Ego

Zen and The Beatles' Revolver

East Or West Indies

Cool Links

The Trip

"I told him (Van Dyke Parks) the new album was tentatively titled Dumb Angel and explained that my goal was to surpass Pet Sounds. Musically and philosophically. I imagined myself creating a whole new form of music, religious, white, spiritual music."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.148.)SMiLE is based upon Brian Wilson's spiritual experiences and the events surrounding those experiences. His religious awareness shifted from
a Western understanding to an Eastern one, from understanding only part of the picture to understanding the bigger picture."...I knew the direction I wanted to head with the next album. Up and farther out. Creatively, I was at the pinnacle of a streak that was heading into its third year. I'd climbed the ladder and stood at the top, all alone, imbibing on the thin air. But none of that satisfied my fundamental need to prove myself. I had to go farther. Now I wanted to jump off the ladder and...fly!"-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.148.)

Bio Based SMiLE

• Heroes And Villains (intro) ~ "Several days before Christmas 1965, I pulled my Corvette out of the garage, wound down Laurel Canyon, and, twenty minutes later, parked in front of Pickwick Bookstore in Hollywood."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.128.)
  This music is best matched to Brian's bookstore (inspiring the SMiLE album's storefront front cover) flashback.
  "Oh my God! The room began to spin. I was in the center of a giant spinning top. Turning, turning, turning. The moment was completely surreal."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)
  

"It had been months since I'd taken acid. But I was having a flashback."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)
"As the buzz subsided into a manageable burned-out sensation, I remembered Loren once explaining that hallucinations were comparable to Zen riddles, mysteries full of meaning..."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)
The SMiLE concept was based upon this experience.
The album is an hallucination comparable to a Zen riddle. Van Dyke Parks' lyrics form hallucinations based upon Brian Wilson's religious LSD experiences.

• Heroes And Villains ~ This song has its own Zen Interpretation page here.
  "Go near him (Loren)," my dad warned, "and I'll call the cops."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.115.)
  There were more than a few battles taking place during the SMiLE era.
  "In summer 1966 the Beach Boys and I occupied two different worlds, merging occasionally in the studio."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.144.)
  There is also some "Heroes And Villains" material here.
• Barnyard ~ "Hit the dirt and do a two and a half, next time I'll leave my hat on..." is a veiled reference to Brian's two and a half LSD trips.
• Our Prayer ~ "The night arrived. Loren set the scene at his apartment: low lights, Lava Lites, music, something to drink..."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.116.)
  This piece, considered an "intro to the album" during its recording, immediately establishes a sacred atmosphere like that of Brian's first LSD trip.
  "There was a sacredness to it all--from the way we said hello to the way Loren handed me a small paper stamp and told me to swallow it."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.116.)
  "The purity of the blending of the voices made the listeners feel spiritual." ~Brian Wilson, from the 20/20 CD liner notes.
  "Loren was always discoursing on spirituality, religious books, inspiring me to make music that would would evoke such feelings."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.131.)
• Child Is The Father Of The Man ~ The title-phrase of this song is taken from the following Wordsworth poem;
  My heart leaps up when I behold
  A rainbow in the sky:
  So was it when my life began;
  So is it now I am a man;
  So be it when I shall grow old,
  Or let me die!
  The Child is father of the Man;
  And I could wish my days to be
  Bound each to each by natural piety.
  "Loren had certain qualities I wanted to absorb...(he) possessed knowledge, hipness, a line to some mysterious trove of ideas I wanted to know more about. He had unlocked the doors of perception for me..."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.115.)
  The Doors Of Perception's author, Aldous Huxley, was hip to the the work of fellow Englishman William Wordsworth.
  "The change that took place in Wordsworth as he passed from Zen through Pantheism to Orthodoxy, is almost unparalled in the history of culture."-R.H.Bylth, Zen In English Literature And Oriental Classics, (pg.412.) SMiLE, as presented here, is Blyth's evolving Wordsworth...in reverse.
  The inward focus of Pet Sounds was suggested by Brian's astrologer;
  "I then told the astrologer about the hallucination I'd had in the bookstore last December, presenting it as a riddle. Genevelyn thought about it for a moment, then explained something that made perfect sense to me. If I wasn't able to find inspiration for songs outside myself, as in books, then I had to look someplace else. I had to look inward. I had to write about the spirituality I felt in my heart."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.131.)
  SMiLE reversed Brian's focus, feeding inspiration from outside sources such as books. Perhaps "Child Is The Father Of The Man" salutes the influence of these sources on Brian's religious conversion.
  Books, after all, were a big part of the acid flashback that eventually led to SMiLE;
  "Moving slowly into the aisles, I concentrated on reading the book titles and their authors. In the philosophy section, I paged through books by Sartre, Camus, Kant. I tried the religion section and picked up the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and the I Ching. I stared at the pages, tried to read, but the letters all vibrated on the pages and I couldn't make sense of anything."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.128.)
  "I freaked out that there was too much knowledge confronting me. I was being overwhelmed by all the information contained in the books on the shelves. There was no way I could ever know everything."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)
  "I extended my arms, wanting to run my hand through the information, wanting to stain my skin with words written by mankind's greatest minds. But all I felt was air. The knowledge was eluding me."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)
  Even though the ultimate answer to Brian's bookstore flashback riddle would be a spiritual one, his original question was a literary one. Van Dyke Parks supplied SMiLE with lyrics reminiscent of the classics. When SMiLE fans cite great works in their attempts to understand SMiLE they are, in essence, revisiting Brian's bookstore experience.
  "Child Is The Father Of The Man" may also be related to "Love To Say Da Da." Both numbers owe their existence to a beatific display in the Heavens (a rainbow and a sunrise) along with seeing the fundamental relationship between "child" and "father" in a new light.
• Do You Like Worms ~ "I stood up and didn't move for what Loren later told me was almost an hour, doing nothing more than stare at the undulating liquid in the Lava Lite until I had absorbed its slow rhythm."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  This song begins with a kettle drum's "slow rhythm."
  Brian's first trip involved "lava" that when Westernized (remember, "hallucinations were comparable to Zen riddles") became Plymouth Rock. The lava, at times resembling worms, rocks...rolls...and rolls over.
  "My brain was a morass of rubber thoughts."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  Perhaps these "rubber thoughts" were expressed as this song's chants.
  "...just as suddenly as I'd checked into the sounds I had to play Loren's piano. I sat down in front of the keyboard..."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  The song's "Bicycle Rider" music is played on piano.
  "Seeing a strange-looking man turn a corner, I convinced myself he was God, leading me on a journey of my entire life, showing me the tiny seed I'd once been and taking me to the place where I'd finish my life."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  Brian's "life journey" is morphed into the chronological Manifest Destiny trip of "Do You Like Worms."
• The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine ~ "Seeing a strange-looking man turn a corner, I convinced myself he was God"-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  The "Old Master Painter" is God.
  "Then he vanished. I was lost."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  You were my sunshine.
  The Old Master Painter from the faraway hills,
  Painted the violets and the daffodils,
  He put the purple in the twilight haze,
  Then did a rainbow for the rainy days.
  Once again, like the poem that inspired "Child Is The Father Of The Man," we have a rainbow reference.
  Then came his masterpiece and when he was through,
  He smiled out in Heaven and he gave me you,
  What a beautiful job on that wonderful day,
  The Old Master Painter from the hills far away.
  Added on, is reference to the sun.
  You were my sunshine my only sunshine,
  You make me happy when skies were grey,
  You'll never know dear how much I love you,
  How could you take my sunshine away.
  "We were young, Marilyn nearing twenty and me closing in on twenty-four, yet I thought we'd lost the innocence of our youth in the heavy seriousness of our lives. The lightness that had once been ours was fading."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.134.)
  "Returning home a bewildered mess, I was immediately chastised by Marilyn. She didn't mince words in telling me how angry she was at me for having gone through with the LSD."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.118.)
  '"I saw God, Mare," I said. "I blew my fucking mind. I saw God. I actually saw him. Felt him. I realized God."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.118.)
  '"Marilyn shook her head. She started crying again. "What's happening to you Brian?" she sobbed. "I feel as if I don't even know you."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.118.)
• Wonderful ~ This song explores/rediscovers Brian's wife's lost innocence and holds hope that she'll eventually discover a spiritually motivated innocence regardless of the company she keeps.
  "Finally, Marilyn issued an ultimatum--it was either her or Loren. I couldn't handle that and ignored her. Frustrated, exhausted, and downright mad, Marilyn packed her belongings and moved..."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.122.)
  "She belongs there left with her liberty, never known as a non-believer."
  "My drug use added to our problems, luring me father out into the abstract world than all but the farthest out, most patient, and intellectual characters could handle. Marilyn certainly wasn't among that group. But my friends were, especially Loren. Marilyn hated him even more than she did the drugs."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.122.)
  Brian's new group of friends (the non-believers?) contrasted with Brian's old "square" friends and family.
• Cabin Essence ~ "One night toward the end of our separation, a friend asked if I wanted to trip...Despite the lingering sense of fear and confusion the first dosage had left me with, I was game to experiment again."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.122.)
  Much like "Do You Like Worms," this song is an LSD trip painted in an antiquated Western fashion. Brian's second trip began with the same "timely hello" that kicked off his first trip.
  "...welcomes the time for a change."
  "As the LSD kicked in, I remember hearing fire trucks from the station across the street rumbling out of the driveway, their sirens wailing louder and louder."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
  The "fire mellow" beginning anticipates the fire experience that will eventually turn the heat up turning home into "home on the range."
  Brian's friend's abode = the cabin.
  The fire trucks = the iron horse.
  "I got scared, more profoundly, deathly scared than ever in my life. Paranoid. There was nothing to be scared of. Just noise outside that was dissipating in the distance. But I sensed danger."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
  "Who ran the Iron Horse?"
  '"You better not drive," my friend called as I ran out the front door, keys jangling in my hand."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
  Brian driving his car = truck driving man.
  "I visualized myself drifting back in time....I continued getting smaller....And then, finally, I was gone."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
  "In the vast past, the last gasp."
  '"I had written the words, see, and I was seeking the threshold for "over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield."'-Van Dyke Parks, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.70.)
  "Those Chinese laborers working on the railroads, like they'd be hitting the thing (spike)...but looking away too, and noticing, say a crow flying overhead...the oriental mind going off on a different track."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.103.)
  Brian Wilson wrote this track from the point of view of the 'spike.' Perhaps this is the golden spike that joined West to East.
  "I visualized myself drifting back in time. Getting smaller and younger. I saw myself as a teenager, then a young boy....I continued getting smaller. I was a baby. An infant."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
• He Gives Speeches ~ The "he" of this song is an infant.
  "I can't imagine how I managed to navigate a car, but I drove straight to Marilyn's parents' house. I walked in the front door, expecting to find Mae and Irving. But they weren't there. Only Barbara lying on the sofa, watching TV. I took a moment to stare at her, the object of so many of my fantasies."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
  "He gives speeches always reaches out a lot..."
  "...I reached out to hug her. That was the last thing she wanted. She dodged my grasp, clawed my arm with her long fingernails, and grabbed my hand so hard that she tore a big wart right off my finger. It hurt like a mother-fucker, and the pain caused me to beat a hasty retreat out of there."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
  "...led him to discover..."
  "After my attack on Barbara, I'd started spending more time with Diane..."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.130.)
  "...she was nice and didn't bite, I fell into her friendly persuasion..."
  '"...wouldn't it be nice if I could lie down beside her and nestle myself in her long hair?"'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.135.)
  "...silken hair fell on his face…"
  A speech given by an infant might go something along the lines of "ta, ta, ta" or "da, da."
• I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night ~ Rebuilding after the fire.
  "I sank into a dark, lonely depression and wanted someone to comfort me and tend to my hypersensitive, childlike wants. I went to Marilyn's apartment."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.124.)
  The music from "I Wanna Be Around" may have been used to imply its titular meaning as the song contains rather spiteful lyrics.
  "It was past midnight, and her lights were off. I knocked at the door anyway. After a minute or so, Marilyn answered wearing her nightgown."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.124.)
  Perhaps this meeting happened on a "Friday Night."
  '"Think about it, Mare. We have enough money now to do anything. We'll get a house and start a family. We can have a normal life. Everything you want.."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.124.)
  The saws and hammering sounds represent both the rebuilding of the relationship and the couple's new house.
  "Two weeks later Marilyn and I went shopping for a house and purchased the second one the realtor showed us. It was up a windy road, on Laurel Way, in the Hollywood Hills, and had a panoramic view of the San Fernando Valley."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.124.)
  "...I pulled my Corvette out of the garage, wound down Laurel Canyon, and, twenty minutes later, parked in front of Pickwick Bookstore in Hollywood."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.128.)
  "Oh my God! The room began to spin. I was in the center of a giant spinning top. Turning, turning, turning. The moment was completely surreal."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)

"I was having a flashback."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)
"As the buzz subsided into a manageable burned-out sensation, I remembered Loren once explaining that hallucinations were comparable to Zen riddles, mysteries full of meaning. What had mine meant?...If that was a riddle, I wanted to know the solution."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)
It is assumed at this point that Brian Wilson begins to research and discover some of the possibilities of Zen.
Brian's second trip had been a bad one, and he had avoided acid since then.
"It had been months since I'd taken acid."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.129.)
But after the flashback Brian's search for an answer (to his personal Zen riddle question) led to his taking LSD for a third time. This trip would give him the solution: the answer.
"...this trip was the ultimate in LSD joyrides..."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.144.)

• Well, You're Welcome ~ "Well, you're well, you're welcome."
  '"Now Al Jardine was in the car with me getting angrier every time I circled the block, which was up to twenty five times. "Stop the car and let me out," he demanded. "Not until you promise me you'll drop acid," I said. "It'll change your life!"'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.144.)
  "Well, you're well, you're welcome."
  Like Brian's car, this four line chant circles the block again and again.
  "Well, you're well, you're welcome."
  '"I pulled the car to the side. Al hopped out and slammed the door shut. I called him back. One more thought.
  "Al," I asked, "do you believe in God?"
  "You know what, Brian?" he said. "You're full of a lot of weird ideas. You better stop taking drugs."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.144.)
  "Well, you're welcome to come."
• Good Vibrations ~ "'The new pastoral landscape suddenly being uncovered by the young generation provided a quiet, peaceful, harmonious trip into inner space. The hassles and frustrations of the external world were cast aside, and new visions put in their place. "Good Vibrations" succeeds in suggesting the healthy emanations that should result from psychic tranquility and inner peace. The word "vibrations" had been employed by students of Eastern philosophy and acid-heads for a variety of purposes, but Wilson uses it here to suggest a kind of extrasensory experience.'" ~Bruce Golden, The Beach Boys: Southern California Pastoral
  "Good Vibrations" was going to be the summation of my musical vision, a harmonic convergence of imagination and talent, production values and craft, songwriting and spirituality. I'd written it five months earlier and imagined the grand, Spectorlike production while on the LSD trip I'd described so enthusiastically for Al."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.145.)
  The "Good Vibrations" promo film featured Brian and The Beach Boys as firemen driving their bright red trucks down the Sunset Strip. It is assumed here that Brian's enlightened third LSD trip vision linked his fiery second trip to "Good Vibrations."
• The Elements (FIRE) Mrs. O'Leary's Cow ~ This instrumental was inspired by Brian's second LSD trip experience.
  "As the LSD kicked in, I remember hearing fire trucks from the station across the street rumbling out of the driveway, their sirens wailing louder and louder. I got scared, more profoundly, deathly scared than ever in my life. Paranoid."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
  '"Inside, more than a dozen of the finest string musicians in Los Angeles were waiting for me to arrive and begin work on "Fire," a section of a longer suite titled The Elements. But for two hours I'd refused to get out of the car. Finally, Van Dyke lost his patience.
  "This is embarrassing," he scolded me. "You're acting like a complete amateur."
  "It's just not happening, and that's it," I said.
  "Why?" he asked. "Why isn't it happening?"
  "Bad vibes," I said."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.155.)
  "Instead of positive spiritual music, I'd tapped into a dark source, an extremely powerful fire music that emitted bad vibrations..."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.156.)
• Love To Say Da Da ~ A Zen Interpretation page, here, is dedicated to this song. The webpage asserts that "Love To Say Da Da" is Brian's enlightened third, and final, LSD trip.
  "After two bad experiences, this trip was the ultimate in LSD joyrides--everything it was supposed to be, four hours of enlightenment and spirituality."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.144.)
  This trip was an unsupervised one; it was just Brian on the beach with "The Elements."
  "It's only happened to me once--early in the morning alone on the beach with the sun coming up very red. A moment of clear light."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.98.)
  Brian envisioned the production of "Good Vibrations" during this trip. He may have also envisioned the basic SMiLE concept during this trip. It is my contention that the basic SMiLE concept is rooted in the Western titled "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" and the Eastern titled "Love To Say Da Da." Together they form the cosmic yin-yang basis for the SMiLE album.
  "...I learned a lot of things, like patience, understanding. I can't teach you or tell you, what I learned from taking it. But I consider it a very religious experience."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.167.)
  Brian's blessed beach bound experience, the type of experience one would want to revisit, manifested itself as Brian's sandbox and swimming pool "obsessions." There were other so-called "obsessions" during the SMiLE era. All of these were symptomatic of Brian's enthusiasm for his new found focus.
  Brian Wilson re-invents himself.
• I'm In Great Shape ~ "Fresh Zen air around my head, morning stumble out of bed. Eggs and grits and lickety split, look at me jump I'm in the great shape of the upper country."
  "There was always some story to the drugs Loren had....the LSD was from up north."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  The Zen lifestyle naturally fits in with this new vision (notice the following quote's water connection.)
  "...swimming. A lot of swimming. It's physical; really Zen, right? The whole spiritual thing is very physical. Swimming really does it sometimes."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.91.)
• Vega-Tables ~ "Curtis (Springer) was very big into vegetables....He was an oddity on late-night radio calling out from the desert about returning to health and the superior lifestyle a person could reach: You could do anything as long as you just ate the right foods."-Van Dyke Parks quoted in the March 2005 issue of Endless Summer Quarterly
  "I want people to turn on to vegetables, good natural food, organic food. Health is an important ingredient in spiritual enlightenment."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.57.)
  The proper lifestyle helps one prepare for spiritual enlightenment and this 'ingestion' based number touts vegetarianism, a work ethic, fitness, and laughter: all have ties to Zen. Laughter is also often associated with dropping acid.
  "He told me that he felt laughter as one of the highest forms of divinity and that when someone was laughing, their connection with the thing that was making them laugh made them more 'open' than they could be at just about any other time."-Michael Vosse, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.265.)
• Wind Chimes ~ This is an example of Brian being 'open' to an outside thing. The song mirrors Brian's first trip experience...the Lava Lite is now Easternized into wind chimes. "I stood up and didn't move for what Loren later told me was almost an hour, doing nothing more than stare at the undulating liquid in the Lava Lite until I had absorbed its slow rhythm."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  The lyrics go back and forth between Brian and the wind chimes, self and other, inner and outer. Brian opens up...
  "Suddenly, I clicked into the music blasting out of Loren's stereo speakers. As I had been promised, music had never sounded so full and tangible, denser and heavier than any music I'd ever heard."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  The middle part of "Wind Chimes" is extra loud and dense.
  "I imagined wading through it like a river, until I felt consumed by it, and just as suddenly as I'd checked into the sounds I had to play Loren's piano."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.117.)
  The sudden coda of "Wind Chimes" is a piano piece.
  "That night, in the afterglow of the LSD, I sat at the piano...within the miasma I began to feel the simmering of a change in consciousness."-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.119.)
• Surf's Up ~ "Surf's Up" is SMiLE contained in a single song.
  The hallucination inducing lyrics (try visualizing them), founded upon Brian's bookstore revelation, contain antiquated warlike images inspired, in part perhaps, by Brian's second LSD trip.
  "I visualized myself drifting back in time. Getting smaller and younger. I saw myself as a teenager, then a young boy. I relived arguments I'd had with my dad."
  -Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.123.)
  These images were enlarged and enhanced by Van Dyke Parks.
  '"One night while we were working, Dennis came to the house, complaining that the Beach Boys' stage outfits, the candy-striped shirts and straight-legged slacks that my dad had picked out in the band's infancy, had elicited ridicule in some of London's hipper circles. I sympathized, while Van Dyke immediately interpreted Dennis's tale on a much broader level. He saw it as a small example of the shame the U.S. was suffering throughout the world as a result of the Vietnam War.
  "We should hit it head-on," he said.
  "I like it," I said. "I don't know much about it, but my instincts tell me you're right."
  Popping some speed, Van Dyke and I stayed up the rest of the night and wrote "Surf's Up," a song whose title was so utterly cliche and square that it couldn't be anything but hip."'-Wouldn't It Be Nice, (pg.162.)
  "Then there's the parties, the drinking, trying to forget the wars, the battles at sea. While at port a do or die. Ships in the harbor, battling it out. A kind of Roman Empire thing."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.89.)
  The antiquated images are cast aside for a new vision. The past doesn't exist, there is only the now.
  "The music begins to take over. Columnated ruin domino. Empires, ideas, lives, institutions--everything has to fall, tumbling like dominoes."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.89.)
  "...all is lost, for now."
  The song reaches a climax mirroring the death of the individual, the ego.
  "A choke of grief. At his own sorrow and the emptiness of his life, because he can't even cry for the suffering in the world, for his own suffering."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.89.)
  Then there is hope. The answer to Brian's bookstore hallucination Zen riddle question is found during his third LSD trip, a rebirth. With the past gone one is, once again, like a child.
  "And then, hope. Surf's up!...Come about hard and join the young and often spring you gave. Go back to the kids, to the beach, to childhood."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.89.)
  So was it when my life began;
  So is it now I am a man;
  The Child is father of the Man;
  "I heard the word--of God; Wonderful thing--the joy of enlightenment, of seeing God. And what is it? A children's song! And then there's the song itself; the song of children; the song of the universe rising and falling in wave after wave, the song of God..."-Brian Wilson, Look! Listen! VIBRATE SMILE!, (pg.89.)